l sciences, sometimes called the
Abstract sciences, and the derivative or Concrete branches. My purpose
does not require any nice clearing of the meanings of those technical
terms. It is sufficient to say that the fundamental sciences are those
that embrace distinct departments of the natural forces or phenomena;
and the derivative or concrete departments assume all the laws laid down
in the others, and apply them in certain spheres of natural objects. For
example, Chemistry is a primary, fundamental, or abstract science; and
Mineralogy is a derivative and concrete science. In Chemistry the stress
lies in explaining a peculiar kind of force, called chemical force; in
Mineralogy the stress is laid on the description and classification of
a select group of natural objects.

The fundamental, or departmental sciences, as most commonly accepted,
are these:--1. Mathematics; 2. Natural Philosophy, or Physics; 3.
Chemistry; 4. Biology; 5. Psychology. They may be, therefore, expressed
as Formal, Inanimate, Animate, and Mental. In these sciences, the idea
is to view exhaustively some department of natural phenomena, and to
assume the order best suited for the elucidation of the phenomena.
Mathematics, the Formal Science, exhausts the relations of Quantity
and Number; measure being a universal property of things. Natural
Philosophy, in its two divisions (molar and molecular), deals with one
kind of force; Chemistry with another: and the two together conspire to
exhaust the phenomena of _inanimate_ nature; being indispensably aided
by the laws and formulae of quantity, as given in Mathematics. Biology
turns over a new leaf; it takes up the phenomenon--Life, or the
_animated_ world. Finally, Psychology makes another stride, and embraces
the sphere of _mind_.

Now, there is no fact or phenomenon of the world that is not comprised
under the doctrines expounded in some one or other of these sciences.
We may have fifty "ologies" besides, but they will merely repeat for
special ends, or in special connections, the principles already
comprised in these five fundamental subjects. The regular, systematic,
exhaustive account of the laws of nature is to be found within their
compass.

[ORDER OF THE FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES.]

Again, these sciences have a fixed order or sequence, the order of
dependence. Mathematics precedes them all, as being not dependent upon
any, while all are more or less dependent upon it. The physical forces
have to be